It would be pure speculation at this early stage
But, we do know that something has changed, as the Premiere maxed out at 2TB drives, so at minimal changes would need to be made to the tools to support what ever new partition layout, or new file system or magic was used. Couple that with minor changes to recognize the new platform and it's shipping disks.

Of course it is also possible that Tivo has locked things down, and drive upgrades will not be possible. This was the case for a while with the Premieres.

If you need more that 1TB anytime in the next 6 months, and want a new Tivo now, go big, go Pro. If you can wait a little, then wait a week or so till some smart folks pop the box open and see what works. The changes might be simple, they might not be.

Tivo has a long track record of finding ways to prevent upgrades using existing tools as well as new ways to thwart hackers with each new platform. Chances are good this won't be any different.

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Or new designs for better performance just make old upgrade tool not work, I do not think TiVo is spending time to prevent hard drives upgrades, all TiVo would have to do is on the initial setup put the hard drive SN into flash and look for that SN on boot, that would end hard drive upgrades for TiVos.

Or new designs for better performance just make old upgrade tool not work, I do not think TiVo is spending time to prevent hard drives upgrades, all TiVo would have to do is on the initial setup put the hard drive SN into flash and look for that SN on boot, that would end hard drive upgrades for TiVos.

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If they did that then we'd be looking at an EEPROM hack just to upgrade the drive. I can't see Tivo doing that because it would cause them too much grief to refurbish Tivos for resale or as a warranty replacement.

I wasn't trying to imply that Tivo was purposely trying to prevent us from upgrading drives. It just tends to turn out that way. As for performance improvements, it's more like adding useless features with little or no improvement to the overall functionality. Tivos have certainly come a long way since the early days, but they'd probably still be mired in the original OS if it weren't for competition from DirecTV, Dish, and the cablecos.

My speculation is a definite maybe. The APM of the 4 tuner units has been modified ever so slightly. I assumed it was in preparation for larger hard drives. JMFS works with those units. If I can see the APM of a Roamio, then that would help me confirm my assumption (and also perhaps provide a way of expanding the 4 tuner units to larger than 2TB.) The kicker would be if the OS JMFS is running off of supports larger than 2TB and if JMFS as written supports larger drives. I, unfortunately, am not a Java programmer so I do not know. If any Java programmers out there can look at JMFS source and see, that would be great.
The only other question is if Tivo changed anything else in their code. When they went from S3 to S4, they changed something that would not allow paired partitions to work. From S3 and earlier units, expansion was done by partition pairs. A MFS app and media partition. With the S4 units, if partitions were added in pairs, the media partition was "deleted." Consequently, the partition pair was coalesced into a single partition which the TiVo liked and we were able to expand. Perhaps TiVo was trying to prevent expansion was the reason for the change. If that is the case, then they might change the code so that any extra partitions that are located on the same drive as the original partitions might be ignored / deleted. In that case, we might be hosed and the only way to expand would be to rewrite the original partitions larger to fill the space available. We won't know any of this until some brave soul is ready to take the plunge and willing to experiment a little. First by using DvrBARS and make a backup of a virgin drive. In the meantime we wait.

If they did that then we'd be looking at an EEPROM hack just to upgrade the drive. I can't see Tivo doing that because it would cause them too much grief to refurbish Tivos for resale or as a warranty replacement.
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To hack any TiVo EEPROM would most likely require some plug in hardware, I sure TiVo will not make it as easy as the BIOS on most computers. But hopefully TiVo did not do this.

To hack any TiVo EEPROM would most likely require some plug in hardware, I sure TiVo will not make it as easy as the BIOS on most computers. But hopefully TiVo did not do this.

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The problem modifying S4 eeproms is that they are located inside the CPU and not on an external chip. Also the eeproms have a bit set to prevent modifications so you have to replace the CPU with a modified CPU. Not for the faint of heart.

My speculation is a definite maybe. The APM of the 4 tuner units has been modified ever so slightly. I assumed it was in preparation for larger hard drives. JMFS works with those units. If I can see the APM of a Roamio, then that would help me confirm my assumption (and also perhaps provide a way of expanding the 4 tuner units to larger than 2TB.) The kicker would be if the OS JMFS is running off of supports larger than 2TB and if JMFS as written supports larger drives. I, unfortunately, am not a Java programmer so I do not know. If any Java programmers out there can look at JMFS source and see, that would be great.
The only other question is if Tivo changed anything else in their code. When they went from S3 to S4, they changed something that would not allow paired partitions to work. From S3 and earlier units, expansion was done by partition pairs. A MFS app and media partition. With the S4 units, if partitions were added in pairs, the media partition was "deleted." Consequently, the partition pair was coalesced into a single partition which the TiVo liked and we were able to expand. Perhaps TiVo was trying to prevent expansion was the reason for the change. If that is the case, then they might change the code so that any extra partitions that are located on the same drive as the original partitions might be ignored / deleted. In that case, we might be hosed and the only way to expand would be to rewrite the original partitions larger to fill the space available. We won't know any of this until some brave soul is ready to take the plunge and willing to experiment a little. First by using DvrBARS and make a backup of a virgin drive. In the meantime we wait.

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You can't really modify APM to support drives greater than 2 TiB. I suppose you could simply increase the logical block size from 512 bytes to something like 4096. That would increase the upper limit to 16 TiB. But that might also require a native advanced format drive, which are rare.

But Tivo could join the 21st century and do what everyone else on the planet does: put the OS on flash and just put the recordings on the hard drive. Upgrading could then be as simple as plugging in a brand new drive, but you'd lose your previous recordings.

It'd be easy to copy the hard drive to another hard drive of the same size, but when copying to a bigger size I'm not sure how you'd expand it. Could be as simple as using a common partition tool to increase the size of the partition.

But you can do what everyone else on the planet does: put the OS on flash and just put the recordings on the hard drive. Upgrading could then be as simple as plugging in a brand new drive, but you'd lose your previous recordings.

It'd be easy to copy the hard drive to another hard drive of the same size, but I'm not sure how you'd expand it. Could be as simple as using a common partition tool to increase the size of the partition.

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Yes and no. The current APM is based on 512 byte blocks. The 4 tuner premieres have code found in a reserved area of each entry in the APM. If that code tells the OS to toggle to 4k blocks, then you can have larger than 2TB drives. Although it is in APM format, nothing forces TiVo to stick to a true APM format.
Common partition tools don't work on TiVos. Even so, expanding the MFS media partition in the APM will not increase the size of it inside the Media File System itself.